Tuesday, December 20, 2005

So, it may or may not come as a surprise to some people, but I love the muppets. I love everything about them. The Muppet Movies, Seasame Street, I even had Miss Piggy ornament that I put on my mom's tree every year at Christmas. I ate Der Swedish Chef's cereal for Christ's sake. Yes, he did have a cereal called "Der Swedish Stars" and the stars were good and they made me happy, and Der Swedish Chef was on the cover and all was right with the world. I still contend that when they stopped making that cereal , our nation went into a steep decline and hasn't recovered, but I'll save that theory for another post.

But the muppets still have my heart, and I will watch them in all of their various reincarnations. That one Weezer Video? Absolutely. The episode of Robot Chicken where they had to put Animal down cause he took a bite out of Ed McMahon? Awesome. Which brings me to my point. I perversely enjoy this. I know I shouldn't. I know that Wiley is probably doomed for all eternity for bastardizing the "Rainbow Connection", but that won't stop me from loving it. I don't know why. I know it's wrong, but I still enjoy it. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to enter a fantasy world in which Lords of Acid covers something from Muppets Take Manhatten...

I was in the lunch room. Yes, I was getting some coffee, but that is not what this post is about. Anywho, I was talking to a couple of people when I notice Frank W's hair. It took me a second then I realized what was wrong with his hair. The hair appeared to be grouped together in a shiny black helmet. Such, an unnatural black color, it screamed "Hey, look at me I was dipped in grease to cover up my gray roots".I guess I will never understand haircolor for men because I've been blessed with good hair to go with my mind to rhyme and two hype feet.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

My body and my clothes have always had this passive-aggressive hateful relationship. The leettle-too-long pants are always getting stepped on by my heel and decide to "show" my feet a thing or two by unraveling at the hem and looking like they are in the process of devouring my ankles. I'm breaking a very basic Go Fug Yourself principle by because my pants are declaring a not-so-subtle war on my heels. My favorite blouse with a plunging neckline is mad at me for wearing a necklace that always gets caught up in it's lace and therefore refused to lay right and instead of flattering my cleavage, mangles it in retaliation. The strap on my favorite holiday party dress breaking right before the company holiday party, forcing me to make the strappy dress into a strapless dress, just because this is the first light of day (or night) the dress has seen in a few years.

Having got a ways through this rant, I realize two important things: A) I have totally lost any male readership I may have had, including Fighting Nun, because of my sartorial related rant and B) I've just made it out that my clothes are an animate objects with their own little agendas, which yes is a bit strange, but not totally unbelievable. As the great Sars once stated, inanimate does not mean insensate. Which means all my clothes, like I choose to believe, are passive-aggressive meanies who take out their aggression on me in the most severe of ways.

And none is more severe, more passive-aggressive, more mean to me than the bra. On a typical day the bra is like a typical self-destructing relationship. In the morning, when I slip on the white lacy bra, it's so simpatico. I look in the mirror and I swear to God it compliments me, tells me how good I look in it, all passionate and fiery at the start. The second I put on a shirt, or do anything other than admire my reflection in the mirror, it decides to literally pout (what with the straps immediately dropping down off my shoulders and all). I try to make amends by readjusting the strap, convincing the bra that I don't like my shirt more than I like it. I just happen to need both. Just when I think I get a reasonable simblance of mutual cooperation between my bra, my shirt and myself, it happens. The strap drops off my shoulder. Again. And then again. And again, and again. Just like the bad boyfriend you keep taking back even though you totally know better. By the end of the day, I'm so glad to have to whole bloody thing off, I feel liberated, until the hem on my pajama bottom decides to give way...

But I wish it was just the one bra that I seem to have this relationship with. Alas, I think I have the same relationship with all of them. I think some of them also get really pissy with me because even though I put them in the nice little laundry bag to make sure their underwires don't get torqued, they all inevitably get tangled up in each other, a bra orgy if you will (or maybe a bra catfight [hee, bra catfight, that's an awesome band name]) and when I put one of them on, the black one with the clasp in the front, it decides that the whole ordeal was way to demeaning and decides not lay flat but creates a little lip which makes it looks like my cleavage has a skin flap underneath a sweater.

But, the one that still gets me mad is still the bra-strap falling down whenever it damn well feels like it. It just really infuriates me. I've tried readjusting most of my bras to the absolute limit, and they still fall down, which infuriates me more and makes me think I should retaliate by getting out the safety pins (That'll learn you), but the thought of safety pinning my bras at the shoulders makes me really sad. And then I start reflecting, like you do in every self-destructing relationship. "Maybe it's not them. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm really flawed. Maybe it's my posture, or that my shoulders are more round than every one elses and therefore can't handle the strap." The problem is getting so bad that today, even though I'm wearing a strapless bra, I'm still feeling as if my straps are down around my elbows. I mean, can you believe that? Residual Strap Droppage? It bites! So it got me to thinking, maybe the reall problem is I have no shoulders. I'll get back to you on that....

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Over the last couple of days I've been asked the same question "How'd you like the company Christmas party on Saterday? Did you have a good time." to which I have created the following reply "Well let's see. An eleven-year-old boy in a sweater vest tried to get fresh with me in the dessert line and apparantly, the kid had been eyeing me like I was a hamhock fresh off the rotisserie from the start of the party. So you tell me where that falls in your spectrum of a good time."

That's right, along with all the mingling and chatting which goes along with every party, somehow I was able to trump the regular party galavanting and go right into being in another kid's spank bank for at least a good six months. Ah, company holiday parties, what a feel good time of year. I just grossed myself out.

Friday, December 09, 2005

I've come to the realization that I will never build a time machine. If I will, my future self would have already come back and told my present self how to make lots a money. Now this is a depressing thought, which the owner of this blog just spits milk out of her nose when I approach the subject with her.That's why time machines suck, if you dream about them you just left in utter depression that nothing happens. It's kinda of like the porn industry. You watch porn, and you think to yourself next time I see a hot girl and her friends all you have to do is burp and fart and they are getting naked. The real world is so depressing.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

So I'm getting my sports snark fix on Deadspin when this little tidbit catches my eyes. Dirk Nowitzki (who Fighting Nun and I have always called Nabisco by the way. Not the handiest insult, but somehow fun to throw out at the TV when he's trying to shoot a free-throw. "Keep on lobbing bricks Nabisco. Keep it up." See? Fun!!) speaking the words Gong Show from your cell phone is definately the coolest thing ever. But it got me to thinking, if I was to do an athlete themed ring-tone, it would have to be Omar Vizquel's version of "Broadway" by Goo Goo Dolls. If that wouldn't make you light up with anticapation every time you get a phone call, I don't know what would...

Consequently, if anyone would like to purchase the album that said song is on, they would make me very happy. Seriously. Like seriously happy. I have no idea who the other players are (except for Ozzie Smith), but if the Behind the Scenes shots on the website are any indication, this album's got to be awesome.

Now I'm wishing the Giants would put out there own version of ringtones. Come on Sabien, get on that ASAP!!!

Thursday, December 01, 2005

I've never been a firm believer in the whole "You are what you own" ethos, that materialistic gains define who a person is. I've never believed that owning a Jag or Mercedes should define who you are. If your self esteem is so wrapped up in your possessions... Well I'm not saying seek therapy, but definately re-evaluate the state of your life.

But there are certain things in my possession that, well I wouldn't say they define me, but they explain who I am. They have a history that is intricately wrapped with my own, even if I can't always define what that history is. Let me explain. Fighting Nun and I are wine drinkers. With every bottle we drink, there is inevitably a cork. I have kept every cork to pretty much every bottle we've shared for the sole fact that the cork represents that time, that memory. It's a nice Italian dinner, or a relaxing evening at home. I believe I saved the cork from our first date. (Fighting Nun paired the wine with a nice cherry cheesecake, making known right from the start that he knew the most direct path to my heart...) There's also a cork in there from a bottle of Champagne that Fighting Nun uncorked the day he proposed. I don't remember which cork goes to which memory, but I do know that they are all moments I want to keep, I want to cherish.

Nothing explains who I am, maps my history, quite like my bead collection. Beading, making jewelry is a hobby that goes back to my second or third girl scout troop meeting. I couldn't have been any older than six, and I don't really remember much about girl scouts (except for one oddly memorable slumber party involving bingo, which yeah, I don't what that's about) other than the first time I made a bracelet with a bunch of hokey plastic beads, but I was hooked. It was something I made that I could wear, and that's all I needed. In third grade, I stumbled upon my mom's old macrame beads, and somehow decided to try the hobby again. From then on, bead collecting and jewelry making has been a part of who I am. It's one of the things I identify with, a title if you will. Every time I look in on my bead collection, I'm re-connecting with an old friend. Sometimes I leave the collection untouched for months (and at one point, even years) at a time. But when I re-connect, I pick up right where I left off, as if no time has passed and everything is new and fresh again.Every bead in that collection, every bead I've ever had, defines me, describes my history both metaphorically and literally. There are still some beads in my collection that were a part of my mother's macrame collection, that's how far back they date me. I also have beads that were from some of my grandmother's old costume jewelry, beads from an aunt, a cousin, from their old jewelry or bead collections. They at one point captured another family member's history, which is a part of my history, my story as a person. My grandmother owned this incredible string of black multi-faceted costume beads that are dark and rich in color yet sparkle and radiate, especially in the light. They matched my grandmother's personality completely, rich and textured and utterly sparkling when she was in the limelight, that is until my grandmother's personality and memory were robbed from her by Alzheimer's and Dimentia. Those beads are the way I choose to remember her. Those beads have a history I'll never know because my grandmother is no longer around to tell it, and also because I took my grandmother for granted and never took the time to listen.

The beads from my mother are earthy, from wood and stone and bone. Hard and practical, but with a beauty all their own. They were also from a time before my mother had me, when she was earthly and hippy like, yet she embraced nature and loved life and beautiful things. They are very practical, and yet very beautiful, very unwavering, as if they will always be around. Just like I hope my mom will be.

Some beads I can recall exactly how they came to be in my possession, some I can't. Some beads bring back memories, certain people. Others, well I have no idea, but they still metaphorically define who I am, or who I was when I got them. I've got this clay fimo centerpeice bead that has a sun and a moon entertwined together and both the sun and the moon have faces and the sun has this huge cheesy smile with teeth (which, why give a sun teeth? Really?) and the bead is both ugly and scary at the same time, and I am never going to use it. But I was a teenager when I bought the bead and I had this obsession with sun and moon iconography and wanted to surround myself with sun and moon images. That's how it became part of my collection. I also have this white glass skull bead which kind of looks like the skull on the skull and cross bones which was on the title screen for The Goonies, except without the eye patch and not quite as cool, or not cool at all really. Along with that bead are these funky blue triangle beads which are just unwieldy and not easy to use at all. I received both of those at the same time from a boy I knew when I was in high school. I had met him at some weird leadership thing I participated inmy junior year and began a weird affair of letters that lasted until shortly before I began college. I had this weird little relationship/infatuation with him, and he gave me these weird little beads as a present that I don't know what to do with, but I probably will never get rid of them because they remind me of him, and that crazy little time in my life. I have these funky green beads which are square shaped that are just kind of odd. I don't know when or for what reason I got them, but I believe they were acquired during my junior year of high school, which was kind or my free-wheeling, funky, free-spirit phase.

The jewelry I make is a different story. When I wear one of my own necklaces, It's like I'm carrying several different memories along with me. A memory of each bead, or a certain feeling attached to each bead is encompassed in the necklace, and yet the necklace itself holds its own memories for me. Little peices of me and yet bigger peices of it tied around my neck, with me as a I make new memories. When I make something and give it to my mom, or send it to a friend, I'm giving them a peice of history, a little bit of something that makes me me. And hopefully, that peice will be a reminder, or hold special memories for that other person. Shared history through bits of glass and string.

When I was younger, I was convinced that my hobby was a talent and that talent could be parlayed into some sort of monetary gain. Basically, I was convinced I could sell the stuff, and I had sold some pieces, to an assortment of random people. Now, it's not about that at all. I don't care if I make a dime off the stuff. It's less about the jewelry than it is about reliving my past and creating a new future. It's not the destination, it's the journey. I like that I can assemble bits of glass and metal and make it into something beautiful and I get to share that beauty. But I like looking in on my beads, sifting through them and taking a trip down memory lane while I'm at it. I like looking in on my old friends. My beads tell my story, and I wouldn't have it any other way.